Banana Flower Salad

through the Hanoi Domestic airport quickly to our car, we drove into Hanoi for lunch at Don’s, for one of the best meals I’ve had on this trip. Don, a Canadian, was the original celebrity chef in Vietnam. His second floor restaurant (most good restaurants are on 2nd floors in Asia) is a bright environment of blues and friendly Asian staff. Not only did I get to relish once more my very favorite foods: green papaya salad, pomelo salad, but a newie – banana flower salad, a feast of julienned veggies as carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, green mango, banana flower (the bulb), but with cilantro, mint and crunched up peanuts and cashews. The fish sauce-rice vinegar-lime and sugar sauce, Yes!! 

So Many Wires

mass travel on the streets. Mostly mopeds (Hondas and Yamahas are the most popular) and automobiles must just make do, though they have the right of way. Dare to walk across the street at a zebra-stripe and you ‘ll be tangled up in mopeds and motorcycles and bicycles – no one stops, not even vehicles.  But you are told just to slowly, confidentially to wade across slowly without panic and they can judge you and move around you. Whew! My Hanoi question is why are there

Stuffed Ga-Ga

thousands of black cables all over the place, like they haven’t found a tube to put them all in. A friend confirmed when there is an electrical problem, somehow the repair-guys can figure out which of the hundreds belongs to you. People on the streets are bundled up like they have a disease with masks, hats then helmets over the hats, and women wear flowered cotton jackets with hoodies. I asked how can you tell if it’s your friend or not, and somehow life happens anyway.  Even in China I didn’t see so many masks – many in bright fabrics. Old women  in triangular bamboo hats still seem to do the carrying, balancing a bamboo pole on the back from which hang two baskets of some sort of fruit or vegetable or product. They dress in the old fashioned pajama form.